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Patchwork on the Bright Field moved slowly Thursday as officials and marine inspectors discovered more holes and a shakey concrete beam inside the freighter's flooded cargo hold.
"It looks like Swiss cheese in there," said Robert Garcia, a technical adviser at the Riverwalk accident site. At least four major holes have been found beneath the waterline of the damaged vessel and more may be discovered during an inspection by divers, he said.
The hold contains a bout 15 feet of water and 20 feet of mushy corn, cargo that has turned to a semisolid substance like rice or pudding, officials said.
The ship contained 128 million pounds of corn when it smashed into the Riverwalk shopping mall, the Hilton Hotel, and a parking garage Dec. 14. Workers started unloading the cargo earlier this week, but stopped when the new holes were found.
Officials with Cargill Inc. have not placed a value on the lost yellow corn, which was loaded in Reserve before the accident, company spokesman Allen Holbert said.
Coast Guard officials had hoped to start patching holes with divers from Pac Brian Industrial Divers of Baton Rouge Thursday morning. But the operation hit a snag when workers found a concrete beam lying diagonally across the cargo hold.
Until the beam was stabilized, no divers would go down for inspection, said Pac Brian, owner of the dive company.
The company also had to finish setting up a hoist for the diver. The company planned to connect a winch to an internal cable and lower the diver from a 14-foot boat inside the cargo hold, Garcia said.
The diver would first inspect the inside and tabulate the size and number of holes, Garcia said. If the holes are small, they can be patched with wood shingles, he said. Bigger holes will have to be welded shut.
"If we can patch it, we can patch it today," Garcia said Thursday.
But by 3:30 pm, diver Rick Buhrnes had yet to don his suit for the job. Along with hard hatted Coast Guard officials and technical advisers, he plotted the best way to approach the mass of water and gelatinous corn.
"This is going to be a first.," he said.
Last week Buhrnes was exploring the outside of the freighter when a small pipe fell of his arm pinning him underwater for about five seconds. Three people pulled him up by his "umbilical" diving cord, Brian said.
So Buhrnes was skittish about the unstabilized concrete beam. "I don't want to get under that now," he said.
Once the holes are patched workers will start pumping water out and getting the Bright Field ready to sail upriver, officials said. But no one is taking any bets on when the freighter will push away from the wharf because the vessel is partially supporting the damaged buildings.
"We're waiting for engineers to get back to us on the stability of the building," Coast Guard officer Patrick Cuty said. "It's got no schedule.
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